Thushan Fernando Uncut

A new book titled The Race for a New Game Machine: Creating the Chips Inside the XBox 360 and the Playstation 3 was released on the 1st of Jannuary this year that looks into the development of the Microsoft Xbox 360 and the Sony Playstation 3 which, as it turned out in the end, were both developed by the IBM Corporation.

The authors of the book, David Shippy (who was the man behind the brains of the Cell) and his co-worker, Mickie Phipps goes into the depths of nerdisms to give an insight into the development of The Cell processor. From the Wall Street Journal review:

When the companies entered into their partnership in 2001, Sony, Toshiba and IBM committed themselves to spending $400 million over five years to design the Cell, not counting the millions of dollars it would take to build two production facilities for making the chip itself. IBM provided the bulk of the manpower, with the design team headquartered at its Austin, Texas, offices. Sony and Toshiba sent teams of engineers to Austin to live and work with their partners in an effort to have the Cell ready for the Playstation 3’s target launch, Christmas 2005.

But a funny thing happened along the way: A new “partner” entered the picture. In late 2002, Microsoft approached IBM about making the chip for Microsoft’s rival game console, the (as yet unnamed) Xbox 360. In 2003, IBM’s Adam Bennett showed Microsoft specs for the still-in-development Cell core. Microsoft was interested and contracted with IBM for their own chip, to be built around the core that IBM was still building with Sony.

All three of the original partners had agreed that IBM would eventually sell the Cell to other clients. But it does not seem to have occurred to Sony that IBM would sell key parts of the Cell before it was complete and to Sony’s primary videogame-console competitor. The result was that Sony’s R&D money was spent creating a component for Microsoft to use against it.

And here’s the real kicker.

Mr. Shippy and Ms. Phipps detail the resulting absurdity: IBM employees hiding their work from Sony and Toshiba engineers in the cubicles next to them; the Xbox chip being tested a few floors above the Cell design teams. Mr. Shippy says that he felt “contaminated” as he sat down with the Microsoft engineers, helping them to sketch out their architectural requirements with lessons learned from his earlier work on Playstation.

The deal only got worse for Sony. Both designs were delivered on time to IBM’s manufacturing division, but there was a problem with the first chip run. Microsoft had had the foresight to order backup manufacturing capacity from a third party. Sony did not and had to wait another six weeks to get their first chips. So Microsoft actually got the chip that Sony helped design before Sony did. In the end, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 hit its target launch in November 2005, becoming its own success. Because of various delays, the Playstation 3 was pushed back a full year.

The book (which arrived on Friday!) goes into all the juicy bits that lead up to the delivery of both processors, well worth the $14USD its listed for on Amazon. Whilst I havent finished the entire book yet, thus far its full of twists and corporate musings and tricks with an interesting look at the teams and people that made these two products possible in the end. You’ll be hooked from the first page - I guarantee it.

Developer, Gaming, Operating Systems, PS3, Xbox, hardware, software cell, console, David Shippy, gamer, games, hardware, ibm, microsoft, phipps, playstation, processor, sony, toshiba, video, xbox

Almost missed this one, Paul Thurrott of WinSuperSite fame has previewed Windows 7 Beta 1 a day before Christmas - he must have been an ultra good  boy in that case.

Well, the waiting is finally over. What you’re looking at here is the eagerly awaited Windows 7 Beta, the pre-release version of Microsoft’s next operating system that will ship publicly by mid-January. As promised, there are no new features exposed in the Beta: Instead, Microsoft has tweaked all of the existed features that were announced at PDC 2008 and provided a build that is capable of day-to-day use. I’ll be reviewing the Windows 7 Beta soon.

Whilst most will have to wait a tinsy bit more before they get their hands on the ‘official’ Beta 1 release - tagged v6.1.7000.0 (winmain.win7beta.081212-1400).

Paul gives us a run down of the installation (part1, part2), first boot (part1 - with Windows Media Player, IE amongst the shots, part2 - Control panel applets, wireless, desktop UI changes).

If that wasnt enough, NeoWin also has a thread from a forum member of the leaked pre-release. Wow, is this not the best Christmas EVAR for l33tle geeks around the globe?

Developer, Operating Systems, Windows, Windows 7, software fivestar, fivestarvip, microsoft, neowin, operating system, paul, vista, win7, winbeta, Windows, windows 7, winmain.win7beta.081212-1400

It only feels like last month Sun released VirtualBox 2.0 and they’ve just released 2.1 which brings a plethora of additional goodies… from the changelog:

• Support for hardware virtualization (VT-x and AMD-V) on Mac OS X hosts
• Support for 64-bit guests on 32-bit host operating systems (experimental; see user manual, chapter 1.6, 64-bit guests, page 16)
• Added support for Intel Nehalem virtualization enhancements (EPT and VPID; see user manual, chapter 1.2, Software vs. hardware virtualization (VT-x and AMD-V), page 10))
• Experimental 3D acceleration via OpenGL (see user manual, chapter 4.8, Hardware 3D acceleration (OpenGL), page 66)
• Experimental LsiLogic and BusLogic SCSI controllers (see user manual, chapter 5.1, Hard disk controllers: IDE, SATA (AHCI), SCSI, page 70)
• Full VMDK/VHD support including snapshots (see user manual, chapter 5.2, Disk image files (VDI, VMDK, VHD), page 72)
• New NAT engine with significantly better performance, reliability and ICMP echo (ping) support (bugs #1046, #2438, #2223, #1247)
• New Host Interface Networking implementations for Windows and Linux hosts with easier setup (replaces TUN/TAP on Linux and manual bridging on Windows)

Some key things to note here, those “cool” people that run OS X can now get hardware virtualisation. Even if you have a 32bit host operating system your able to run 64bit hosts so long as you enable hardware acceleration on the CPU (AMD-V or Intel-VT) as VirtualBox’s Hypervisor requires this to work. A couple of other major additions - tested personally, include the enhanced virtualisation on the new Nahalem processors (Extended Page Table & Virtual Processor Identifier - see below) and the starting block for OpenGL (and later DirectX) Acceleration in XP and Vista. Testing this on OpenGL gave some decent performance though its still got a bit of work to do.

The move to include 3D acceleration is an interesting one, considering VMWare recently acquired Tungsten Graphics - who is the company behind Mesa, TTM memory manager and Gallium3D.  Interesting times ahead - as always

What’s an Extendable Page Table & that VPID thing???

Virtualisation in the Intel world comes in two flavours, the Intel VT-x and Intel VT-i Architectures. The VT-x is for IA-32 processors, whilst the VT-i is for Itanium processors.

Intel took a slice of the Virtualisation pie offered by AMD’s Pacifier architecture in implementing a method of translating ordinary IA-32 page tables from the guest-physical addresses to the host-physical addresses used to access memory. This way, guest’s can handle their own page tables directly and page-faults associated with them directly and minimize the (sizable) overhead associated with translating. This is known as Extended Page Tables (EPT).

Virtual Processor Identifiers (VPIDs) on the other hand allows a hypervisor (or a VMM) to assign a non-zero VPID to each virtual processor with the initial processor (VPID = 0) assigned to the hypervisor itself. This way, the CPU can use the VPIDs to tag translations in the Translation Lookaside Buffer (TLB) which removes the performance penalties associated with flushing TLBs on VM Entry and exit.

Both these two bits of technology (along with NMI-window exiting)  come on the Nahelem processor’s Virtualisation enhancments. If your interested in a more indepth explanation see the article Solving Virtualisation Challenges with VT-X and VT-I from the Intel Technology Journal.

Other Changes in 2.1

• VMM: significant performance improvements for VT-x (real mode execution)
• VMM: support for hardware breakpoints (VT-x and AMD-V only; bug #477)
• VMM: VGA performance improvements for VT-x and AMD-V
• VMM: Solaris and OpenSolaris guest performance improvements for AMD-V (Barcelona family CPUs only)
• VMM: fixed guru meditation while running the Dr. Web virus scanner (software virtualization only; bug #1439)
• VMM: deactivate VT-x and AMD-V when the host machine goes into suspend mode; reactivate when the host machine resumes (Windows, Mac OS X & Linux hosts; bug #1660)
• VMM: fixed guest hangs when restoring VT-x or AMD-V saved states/snapshots
• VMM: fixed guru meditation when executing a one byte debug instruction (VT-x only; bug #2617)
• VMM: fixed guru meditation for PAE guests on non-PAE hosts (VT-x)
• VMM: disallow mixing of software and hardware virtualization execution in general (bug #2404)
• VMM: fixed black screen when booting OS/2 1.x (AMD-V only)
• GUI: pause running VMs when the host machine goes into suspend mode (Windows & Mac OS X hosts)
• GUI: resume previously paused VMs when the host machine resumes after suspend (Windows & Mac OS X hosts)
• GUI: save the state of running or paused VMs when the host machine’s battery reaches critical level (Windows hosts)
• GUI: properly restore the position of the selector window when running on the compiz window manager
• GUI: properly restore the VM in seamless mode (2.0 regression)
• GUI: warn user about non optimal memory settings
• GUI: structure operating system list according to family and version for improved usability
• GUI: predefined settings for QNX guests
• IDE: improved ATAPI passthrough support
• Networking: added support for up to 8 Ethernet adapters per VM
• Networking: fixed issue where a VM could lose connectivity after a reboot
• iSCSI: allow snapshot/diff creation using local VDI file
• iSCSI: improved interoperability with iSCSI targets
• Graphics: fixed handling of a guest video memory which is not a power of two (bug #2724)
• VBoxManage: fixed bug which prevented setting up the serial port for direct device access.
• VBoxManage: added support for VMDK and VHD image creation
• VBoxManage: added support for image conversion (VDI/VMDK/VHD/RAW)
• Solaris hosts: added IPv6 support between host and guest when using host interface networking
• Mac OS X hosts: added ACPI host power status reporting
• API: redesigned storage model with better generalization
• API: allow attaching a hard disk to more than one VM at a time
• API: added methods to return network configuration information of the host system
• Shared Folders: performance and stability fixes for Windows guests (Microsoft Office Applications)

Performance & Updates

Overall, on the two different machines that I’ve tried the new 2.1 release on, they’ve both “felt” snappier (QX6850 and a Core i7 965E - architecture summary) but unlike the 1.6 release - which was somewhat flakey for me, 2.x releases of VirtualBox are solid.

Dont take my word for it, download and try it out.

Gets me a VirtualBox 2.1

Grab your copy and try it out.

• VirtualBox 2.1.0 for Windows hosts x86 | AMD64

• VirtualBox 2.1.0 for OS X hosts Intel Macs

• VirtualBox 2.1.0 for Linux hosts

• VirtualBox 2.1.0 for Solaris and OpenSolaris hosts x86 | AMD64

• VirtualBox 2.1.0 Software Developer Kit (SDK) All platforms

• VirtualBox 2.1.0 User Manual (updated 2008-12-17)

Give it a shot, heck try OpenSolaris 2008.11 on there just for kicks!

Developer, Kernel / Internals, Linux/Unix, OpenSolaris, Operating Systems, Tools / Products, Windows, hardware, software amd, amd64, hypervisor, ia32, ia64, Intel, linux, pacifier, PC, solaris, vanderpool, virtual, virtualbox, virtualisation, virtualization, virtualpc, vm, vmm, vmware, vt, Windows, x64, x86

Found an interesting run down of some information about the leaked builds of Windows 7 from WinHEC China by Robert McLaws. Theres also some juicy bits about the much loved boot-screen in the upcoming Windows 7 release.

Developer, Kernel / Internals, Operating Systems, Security, Windows, Windows 7, software boot, china, leaked, progress, vista, Windows, windows 7, winhec

Epic news, Google has released a 1.0 release of Chrome.

We have removed the beta label as our goals for stability and performance have been met but our work is far from done. We are working to add some common browser features such as form autofill and RSS support in the near future. We are also developing an extensions platform along with support for Mac and Linux. If you are already using Google Chrome, the update system ensures that you get the latest bug fixes and security patches, so you will get the newest version automatically in the next few days.

You can download a windows version today, the Linux & Mac OS builds are still in development.

Cool Tools, Developer, Operating Systems, Web / Internets, Windows, software browser, chrome, explorer, firefox, google, internet, konquerer, linux, mozilla, opera, safari, web browser, webkit, Windows

Thats right, get it while its hawt! SP2 Beta for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 is available for your downloading pleasure. Weighing in at 338Mb its one download for both OS’s.

SP2 is an update to Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista that addresses feedback from our customers and partners. By providing these fixes integrated into a single service pack, Microsoft provides a single high-quality update that minimizes deployment and testing complexity for customers.
In addition to all previously released updates, SP2 will contain changes focused on addressing reliability and performance issues, supporting new kinds of hardware, and adding support for several emerging standards. SP2 will also continue to make it easier for IT administrators to deploy and manage large installations of Windows Server 2008.

Service Pack 1 is a prerequisite for installing Service Pack 2. Please make sure that your system is running Service Pack 1 before you install Service Pack 2.
Windows Server 2008 SP2 Beta and Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Beta - Five Language Standalone version can be installed on systems with any of the following language versions: English, French, German, Japanese, or Spanish.

Technet areas:

• Windows Vista SP2 TechNet
  

• Windows Server 2008 SP2 TechNet

Download links:

Developer, Kernel / Internals, Operating Systems, Windows, software beta, microsoft, prerelease, server, service pack, sp2, vista, Windows, windows server 2008, windows vista sp2

OpenSolaris 2008.11 has just been released, it encompasses some super cool new features and I’ve been waiting patiently to try this OS - need something new to learn!

The OpenSolaris 2008.11 operating system is a point of integration for the installation, desktop, and package management system projects on OpenSolaris.org. Today, the OpenSolaris 2008.11 live CD is available with the following feature updates:

ZFS Time Slider and Songbird;suspend/resume and CPU power management; Distribution Constructor and Prototype Automated Installer; WebStack with 64-bit MySQL, CherryPy, and DTrace for Ruby; GNOME 2.24, OpenOffice.org 3.0, and Firefox 3; Many F/OSS applications added, including top, sudo and Emacs; 700 additional man pages and Package Manager online help

Just a bit of background, OpenSolaris is based on Solaris, which was originally released by Sun Micro-Systems in 1991. Sun decided to release Open-Solaris to build a developer community around their Solaris product. Eventually it seems they will be basing technology for Solaris from OpenSolaris. So you know OpenSolaris will rock your world if its backed by Sun.

Download page for OpenSolaris 2008.11 or Direct Download of ISO and the 2008.11 Release notes.

Checkout the newly revamped OpenSolaris website, in particular the Learn area. Personally I’m looking forward to seeing the ZFS, Virtualisation Enhancements and DTrace loving.

Developer, Its My Life, Kernel / Internals, OpenSolaris, Operating Systems, hardware, software OpenSolaris, operating system, solaris, storage, sun, zfs

Completely forgot about a birthday, Windows turned 25 on the 10th of November.

On November 10th, 1983, Bill Gates first unveilled Microsoft Windows (v1.0) to the world at an unprecedented elaborate event at the Helmsley Palace Hotel (Wikipedia) in New York City. Windows 1.0 boasted a graphical user-interface to the MS-DOs world with menus, icons and multi-tasking. Not that I was around back then (I was born just under a year later) but here’s some screenies for your pleasure.

Windows 1.0 Boxshot

All for a cheap $99 and it even comes with Reversi. Steve Balmer, crazy back then, still a crazy guy today.

Belated Happy Birthday.

Developer, Operating Systems, Windows, software 1.0, bill gates, history, operating system, software, steve balmer, win, Windows, windoze

Developer, Gaming, General, Its My Life, Operating Systems, hardware, humour, software clean, computer, crazy, daily dilbert, dilbert, fix, funny, house, humour, literature

This weekend saw the 24-hour launch party for Call Of Duty 5: World At War at Swinburne University in Hawthorn (my old uni). With a scourge of ubber nerds and geeks gathering from all around town to come play CoD5 first.

Amongst the promoters were Alienware - who provided PCs, Sapphire Technologies - who’s graphic cards donned the Alienware boxes, Razer - Keyboard & Mice, V - to help keep the gamers on the ball and Microsoft who graciously provided a stack (100 or so) Xbox 360s to keep things moving.

Activision even went so far as to keep the troops entertained with several models representing Alienware, Razer and ATI for eye-candy (because you know some geek out there is going to want to get their picture taken with them) - which reminds me:

I didn’t a chance to take too many shots - far too busy playing CoD5, but everything that was taken is available in the Swinburne Call Of Duty 5 Launch set on Flickr. It was a night of (maybe too much) gaming - which was followed by a quick 4hr ‘break’ to play at a LAN Games at another venue not too far from uni, dinner at the good old Hong Kong Seafood Hut and an overload of caffeine (V, Mochas, Red Bulls). Aside from CoD5, inside the BA building, you could jam out to some Guitar Heroes if all this mindless, senseless killing is gotten to you.

Everyone attending got to take home a show-bag with some goodies - self-heating coffee mug, dog tag, CoD hat, t-shirt, CoD pen, lanyard and just to confuse you, a copy of Spider-Man 3 for PC. You could also buy a copy of the game and gear but if the price was any indication, I doubt many did.

Of course, Swinburne’s big promo of hosting the launch is to bring to light the awesome games oriented degree they offer. The double degree probably takes the cake for having the longest title for a university degree in the history of the world and competes directly with RMIT’s BIT: Games & Graphics Programming degree.

Bachelor of Multimedia (Games and Interactivity) / Bachelor of Science (Computer Science and Software Engineering)

Take a looksy, who knows, you could be working on the next Call Of Duty!

Developer, Gaming, Its My Life, PC, Xbox, software activision, alienware, babes, call of duty, call of duty 5, fps, gamer, games, Gaming, girls, lan, launch, microsoft, multiplayer, party, promo, razer, swinburne, war, world, world at war, xbox, xbox 360